Head of the International Coffee Organisation Nesto Osorio said that despite ranking as the second largest coffee producing country worldwide after Brazil, Vietnam still had two advantages: it retains the world’s largest output of robusta coffee and the world’s lowest production costs.
Meanwhile, with the advanced technologies applied in coffee processing, robusta coffee is selected more by coffee processors in the world as it helps to reduce costs of instant coffee. Many international experts said that the demand for robusta coffee will increase by 2-3 percent in the near future.
President of Vietnam Cocoa and Coffee Association (Vicofa) forecast that the world consumption demand for coffee will increase by 2 million bags of 60 kilogrammes each and the demand is expected to rise to 140 million bags by 2018.
The accession to the WTO has given Vietnam a golden opportunity, a country with more than 500,000 hectares of coffee, as the organisation has a consumer market of 5 billion people and an import turnover of US$635 billion.
With these advantages, Vietnam’s coffee industry will have the opportunity to expand its export market and raise its prices.
The Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development said that Vietnam’s coffee production activities have had a remarkable influence on the world’s coffee market. Therefore, this is a good time for local companies to raise coffee exports.
Vietnam has been exporting 850,000 tonnes of coffee beans to more than 70 countries and territories every year. The figure reached more than 1 million tonnes last year, equivalent to over VND1.6 billion. In the first half of this year alone, the country earned more than VND1 billion from coffee exports, much higher against the same period of 2007.
Vietnam has emerged as Germany’s second largest coffee exporter, one of the biggest coffee consumption markets in Europe. Last year, Vietnam shipped 234,000 tonnes of coffee to Germany last year and imported 1.1 million tonnes of coffee from the market. In recent years, German people have become familiar with the flavour of Vietnamese coffee.
Vietnam exported about 11,000 tonnes of coffee to Morocco last year, accounting for approximately half of the coffee imports into the country. It aims to increase this figure to 13,000-14,000 tonnes in 2008.
However, experts also noted that to achieve sustainable growth, Vietnam’s coffee industry need to take measures to deal with the quality of its coffee and out of date harvesting and preserving techniques. Particularly as Vietnam has not yet built up a strong trademark for its coffee in the market.
The Vice Chairman of the Vietnam Cocoa and Coffee Association emphasised that it is time for Vietnamese coffee growers and processors to raise their coffee’s quality. Additionally, local exporters need to come up with a plan to cooperate and develop a trade floor for coffee. (Vinanet)
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